This week we find our digital projects editor with the managing members of the Fembot Collective, led by Radhika Gajjala at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio.

Getting ready to start the @ManifoldScholar day here at Bowling Green with @FembotColl. The School of Media Communications building is amazing!

— Terence Smyre (@tremayning) September 9, 2019

One of the first things Radhika mentioned to Terence over opening dinner on Sunday night was the importance she placed on helping people make connections, grow their networks, and provide opportunities for growth and cooperation. That spirit permeated everything they did. Not only did she assemble a team from within her program in the School of Media and Communication, she brought in stakeholders from the library, English, and computer science departments, as well as members of the Fembot collective from Penn State University Library.

Terence remarked, “It was amazing and humbling to have such a talented group of people coming together to meet and share their time and wisdom and experience—and good humour.”

We meshed quickly as a group and made the two days we had together count. Right from the start we launched into the deep end of the pool, surveying more of the advanced components of the platform and reviewing different strategies to align it with the goals and processes the Fembot Collective already employs. From journals to podcast publishing, we covered it all. And because we went right at the heart of it, we had time on the second day to devote to a hands-on workshop with small teams working in the system with the kinds of materials they’ll be publishing in the months ahead.

Watch this site as we continue our @ManifoldScholar workshop - https://t.co/h4gKhbAIBzTrial move of #AdaIssue15 (https://t.co/Pgsu5o6gCq) from wordpress to #manifold The worker-bees team is at it with @tremayning

— cyberdiva (@cyberdivalivesl) September 9, 2019

The Fembot Collective mobilizes and supports feminist media activists, artists, producers, and scholars internationally. The collective publishes the academic journal Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, hosts the podcast series Books Aren't Dead, and supports feminist digital projects through the digital and social infrastructure for FemTechNet. Follow Fembot on Twitter, Fembot on Facebook, and Fembot on Instagram, or visit the Fembot website for more information.

• Miles Traveled: 1,194
• Culinary Highlights: The Naslada Bistro just off campus was an amazing place to close out the first full day of work. Terence had never had Bulgarian food before, and said it was sumptuous! “It was tough to choose, but I don’t know how I could have done better than with the Chicken Kavarma.” His response to the cayenne wine sauce with San Marzano tomatoes: “Wow. Just wow!”
• Cheese: None! Terence gets no end of grief for not liking cheese. He can eat it; he just doesn’t like it. (Loathe it may be closer to the mark, actually.) And that comes up very often. But on Monday night he sat down to break bread with a table of folks for whom there was a majority that also didn’t like cheese. That’s never happened before. It may never happen again. He says he’ll savor that experience till the end of his days.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to reach out on the Manifold Community Slack channel, tweet us at @manifoldscholar, and follow along with Manifold Scholar on Github for more details and to request features.